“I don’t presume that you automatically support me because of a common faith,” Huckabee told a group of more than 100 conservative pastors. “I know I have to earn that. But I also recognize that there is a unique kind of opportunity. For a long time, those of us who are people of faith are asked to support candidates who would come and talk to us. But rarely has there been one who comes from us.”
***“Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives,” he told reporters, “were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party.”
Mark Levin, taking a break from calling Rush Limbaugh Conservative of the year, is miffed:
Huckabee continues to use his faith as a weapon against those who question not his faith, but his political populism — much of which he shares with secular progressives. And he is clearly hoping to stir up resentment among Evangelical Christians against the other elements of the conservative movement and Republican Party as a way of encouraging them to vote in the caucuses and primaries. This is a tactic right out of Saul Alinsky’s playbook. Of course he wants us to believe the Reagan coalition is dead because he cannot win with it intact. But he cannot win either the nomination or presidency with the narrow focus of his appeal. This is why I find Mike Huckabee’s tactics and candidacy so deplorable.
Now, on the other hand, if Huckabee would do what the GOP normally does, which is stir up resentment among Evangelicals for gays, non-Christians, liberals, etc., why then it would just be swell.
Personally, I am LOVING THIS. Enjoy, Levin. Maybe you and your NRO cohorts can attend the official Justice Sundays when Huckabee gets the nomination.
ThymeZone
I don’t see what’s new here. Huckabee is just a typical Republican, just a little more so.
The guy is a Baptist preacher. If he couldn’t sell a line of bull, who could?
jh
THe problem with Levin and many others is that he has a cartoon version of Evangelicals. Evangelicals are a diverse group and have some ideas about Economics, the poor, and a host of other issues. Sadly Levin and others do not get it.
gypsy howell
Yeah, you’re saying that now. Wait til Hucksterbee is president, and see how much you love it then.
Don’t say it can’t happen. We’re talking about a country that elected Bush twice.
And don’t think that if he gets the nomination (personally, I think it will end up being McCain, which scares the crap out of me but that’s another story) that all the republicans won’t fall in line and vote for the Bible-nonsense-spouting scumsucker.
Ted
Translation: if the Reagan Coalition is intact, we can still string the Christianists along with promises we won’t keep, and still keep our promises to the corporate wing of the party. This guy is threatening that arrangement.
F. Frederson
It’s never a question of whether or not Republicans will fall in line. It’s a question of how many flabby-minded independents fall for the veneer of rationality and compassion. Huckabee is a lot harder to dress-up than McCain, especially since McCain’s “straight-talker” narrative is permanently embedded in the media’s consciousness. I haven’t looked at the matchups lately but I am fairly sure McCain would be stronger in the general.
Libby Spencer
I’m not finding it as funny as I did at first. His poll numbers are making me nervous and I don’t think it’s impossible that he could get elected no matter how crazy he is for precisely the same reason. An elecorate who voted in Bush twice, could make a bad mistake again.
Jake
Someone send Levin a copy of The Island of Dr. Moreau.
I’d do it but I’m laughing too hard.
D-Chance.
Sounds like someone talking about African-Americans in Hillary’s Democratic Party. Heh.
Incertus (Brian)
I’m not worried, because I’ll tell you who will switch sides if he gets the nomination–big money. Corporate American will gladly take Clibama over Huckabee’s populist message, and there aren’t enough brain-dead evangelicals (because they’re not all brain-dead) to elect Huckabee on their own.
The Other Steve
Apparently Jimmy Carter’s work with habitat for humanity and such is driven by his secular progressive values, and not his Christian upbringing.
This is an amazingly ignorant statement. About Christians on both the left and right.
The Other Steve
Aye. Huckabee is going to lose a lot of the secular Republicans. They just won’t show up to vote.
Chuck Butcher
Nearly half the regular antendees at the Baker County Democrats meetings are regular antendees of the church whose space we rent, Presbetyrian. This County Party is pretty representatve, politically, of the Democratic Party of Oregon, though I can’t speak to the DPO church attendence. I am not religious, but I pay attention and lumping religiousity with Party is stupid and self-defeating. It also plays into the Republican “framing” of godless Democrats.
I really don’t care who the Republicans nominate, even if the Democrats nominate Hillary (yuck), if they keep their heads screwed on the Republican should be meat.
Darkness
Huckabee’s appeal is plain as day to young Christians. I remember being a young Catholic and hearing the gentle message of Jesus: caring for everyone in society, regardless of creed or color; peace above all; do not kill reiterated (even if they feel like ditching the rest of those inconvenient Hebrew commandments). Jesus is not a mixed figure. He’s pretty darn clear on what he’s saying. Mix that with rosy-eyed youth and you get a recipe for support for social programs and a distaste for war. In the New Testament, wealth is evil, no bones about it, no loop-hole clause, just bad, here and in the hereafter.
These bright-eyed Christian activists will eventually become the Bushie-tailed greedy bastards their parents became, but for now I find their activism refreshing. I don’t want Huckabee to win, but the old guard sure does need a cold hard lesson in where they came from and of what they supposedly speak. The article in the WaPo today called it Washingtonian, but heck, call it what it really is: an addiction to greed and power that would have Jesus’s robes in a twist.
Starscream
The new, Goldberg-driven idea of populism at the National Review is that all populism is inherently liberal.
Kind of like how when you’re wheezing up a flight of stairs after watching Neil Cavuto with a half-gallon of YooHoo and a bag of organic Cheetos, all fit people are psychopaths.
Birdzilla
I dont trust this huckabee wacko i mean he is too liberal and too much a liberal crinimal coddling nut
F. Frederson
On the matchups, here’s the latest. McCain is the strongest by far in the general.